The past three years have sparked a revolution for the future of work. Key technology trends, like AI, and a heightened focus on employee well-being as a core component of organizational growth have illuminated just how intrinsic empathy is to the success of the modern workplace.
Jon Shanahan
President and CEO, Businessolver
Jon is a founder, president, CEO, and member of the board of directors at Businessolver. Jon’s educational background includes undergraduate studies in psychology and business at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, as well as graduate studies in industrial relations at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa.
We’re watching AI take the world by storm this year with sweeping innovations like generative text models, anti-bias machine-learning, and data analytics. But AI has been around for a while. What’s new about these AI innovations is how they can drive more meaningful and empathetic experiences for the people who engage with them.
The primary innovation we’re seeing at Businessolver is the infusion of empathy into AI technology — with a direct focus on bettering the human experience. Empathetic AI is making a significant shift to the way we engage with people, marked especially by its ability to help drive better connection, efficiency, and engagement in the workplace.
We have studied the impact of empathy in the workplace since 2016 and I’ve witnessed several trends that have held steady over these eight years:
- Benefits are one of the top ways employers can show empathy.
- Benefits expectations are shifting beyond the scope of medical, vision, and dental.
- Workplace flexibility and voluntary benefits top the list of empathetic benefits.
- Empathy is a top reason employees will stay at or leave their current company.
Today’s employee expects a broad suite of benefits that support their holistic wellbeing. Yet 85% of employees are confused about their benefits, a direct result of historically unempathetic experiences, leading to contradictory participation and utilization numbers.
But empathetic AI is poised to change that — and so much more — within the workplace experience. AI has helped drive meaningful connections between humans, technology, and benefits simply by infusing technology with the ability to meet people where they’re at, regardless of expertise.
We’re already seeing the positive effects of AI in real time in the employee benefits space: AI is helping reduce barriers to benefits, serving up critical insights from large data sets to HR teams, empowering more diverse talent sourcing and retention, and broadening an organization’s ability to express and scale empathy for its employees.
As empathy continues to evolve in the AI space, its value will shift from simple efficiencies and cost savings to more complex value drivers, such as helping employees select and engage with meaningful benefits, serving HR critical insights to inform their strategy, and driving more stability and growth for a business’s bottom line.
No amount of automation can erase the value — or need for — empathetic human interaction. But empathetic AI technology can be used to scale empathy for more meaningful, personalized interactions that pay dividends in happier, healthier customers and employees.